Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"Civilsation" means that it  is the only country in Europe that doesn’t have a  time limit  on detention. "The UK once welcomed refugees – now we detain them indefinitely"

"Britain isn't racist." The likes of Hancock and Johnson are unsurprisingly in denial. Johnson nuanced his opinion by saying that Britain is "much, much less racist" than the U.S, for example. Johnson and his ilk have also condemned the "thuggery" of those who pulled down Colston statue, saying that the protesters must have followed the right/legal channels, not taking direct action.   Actually, that's what the campaingers have done for years, but with no change. The campaign of Rhodes Must Fall is a case in point. -------- For the [Rhodes Must Fall] movement’s vocal critics, it has been commonplace to observe, euphemistically, that Rhodes was “a man of his time”, by way of suggesting that his time has nothing in common with our own. But if you replace the word “British” with “western” and “United Kingdom” with “the west”, you find this statement in his will encapsulates not only Rhodes’s vision but a vision of the world today, one that ha

I am a police officer in London

The ghosts of Christmas present Christmas is always a time of heightened emotion in Britain. The airwaves are filled with pop songs specially composed for the festive period and the same irritating tunes are endlessly looped in supermarkets and department stores. Short of total isolation there is no escape from the Christmas vortex. Families get together again and work colleagues get drunk at office parties as the country winds down until the New Year. It is a time for relaxation and excessive eating and drinking. However, as happiness is on the order of the day and enjoyment is in great demand such heightened expectations also produce their opposite, as the lonely, the excluded, and the poorest are confronted by the stark contrast between hype and reality.  At London’s busiest shopping intersection in Oxford Circus, Danny, a former Speakers’ Corner regular wields a megaphone. He stands self-confident and righteously appeals to the bustling mass of passers-by not to buy any Chris

Holding another referendum on the EU would "break faith with the British people", Theresa May will warn MPs. I think it is accurate to use the word "faith".

The Zaghari-Ratcliffe case and Theresa May's outrageous hypocrisy

Britain drifts [more] towards repressive regimes as Brexit looms

"Isn't UK mainstream culture extraordinarily sick in allowing Johnson (and May and Cameron etc) to bomb and starve the MidEast's poorest country for 3 years *with impunity* while one comment [about the burka-wearing women] sets off a storm of protest?" — Mark Curtis "Allowing"? They have been arming a friend, the Saudi monarchy, and a high court has sanctioned the arms sale. That means it's been "a democracy decision!"

"here’s what might surprise you, if you’ve read too much liberal academic bullshit about the “white working class". Opposition to Brexit, and the xenophobia that’s come with it, was strong in Durham. This was mainly white, working class people refusing to adopt the reactionary identity of the “white working class”, invented by liberal pundits in response to Trump." The labour movement and Brexit

Britain has gone to huge trouble to humiliate itself

Mission accomplished

I usually do not read the "gutter press" as Oscar Wilde called it, but I should make an exception this time of attractive headline on The Sun's front page: PM's ultimatum to MP's - BACK ME OR BACK BRUTALITY." One needs to learn that in life there are only two options: "You are either with us or with the terrorists" (George W. Bush). Here is how that great German novelist, Thomas Mann, would have replied to Theresa May, Trump and Macron who have been "foaming at the mouth monotonous catchwords". " This fantastic state of mind, of a humanity that has outrun its ideas, is matched by a political scene in the grotesque style, with Salvation Army methods, hallelujahs and bell-ringing and dervish-like repetition of monotonous catchwords, until everybody foams at the mouth. Fanaticism turns into a means of salvation, enthusiasm into epileptic ecstasy . . . and reason veils her face." — Thomas Mann, “An Appeal to Reason” in  The Be

From the Financial Times Brexit reinforces Britain's imperial amnesia

Britain However radical Labour’s 2017 manifesto was in many ways, it said nothing about rolling back the mechanisms bequeathed by the “war on terror.” This reflects a major historical weakness for Labour, which was always its loyalty to the constitutional status quo. This Veritable Arsenal

As rights violation increases in Egypt, so does British investment

England It is easy to forget that in 2005 Theresa May was a shadow minister going into a general election with a Conservative manifesto promising to scrap all tuition fees, the BBC reminds us. "People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises." — L.